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    Alzheimer's murder mystery wins medical lit prize

    By RAPHAEL G. SATTER - Associated Press | AP – Wed, Nov 9, 2011

    LONDON (AP) — A thriller told from the perspective of an Alzheimer's-afflicted murder suspect has won the medical-themed Wellcome Trust Book Prize, organizers said Wednesday.

    Alice LaPlante's debut novel "Turn of Mind" takes readers inside the mind of Dr. Jennifer White, a former surgeon whose eroding memories could carry the key to the mysterious death of her best friend.

    In a statement, the judging panel said the book's "superbly evocative first-person narrative brings the reality of Alzheimer's to life." Science writer Vivienne Parry, the panel's chair, said the book "emphatically confirms the ability of literature to tell us more about the heart and soul of an illness than any textbook."

    LaPlante said she was inspired by her mother's decade-long battle with Alzheimer's, which she described as "a brutal disease."

    The Palo Alto, California-based writing teacher got the idea for exploring the condition through the crime genre while watching a Friday night mystery on television a couple of years ago.

    "Wouldn't it be funny if you had a detective who had Alzheimer's and who couldn't remember the clues?" she recalled thinking. Eventually she settled on writing from the suspect's point of view.

    LaPlante's novel was one of six works shortlisted for the 25,000-pound ($40,000) award. Philip Roth's "Nemesis," an account of the lingering guilt left by a New Jersey polio epidemic, topped the list.

    "State of Wonder," about a drugs researcher's snake-ridden trek through the Amazon to uncover the fate of her missing boss and "My Dear I Wanted To Tell You," a World War I-era tale about the psychological devastation of battle, rounded out the novels.

    Also in the running were Sarah Manguso's "The Two Kinds of Decay," a spare but lyrical nonfiction account of the autoimmune disease that attacked her as a 21-year-old college student, and "The Emperor of All Maladies," by influential oncologist Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a historical work that covers 5,000 years of struggle against the scourge of cancer.

    The Wellcome Prize, now in its third year, is intended to promote books at the intersection of medicine and literature.

    ___

    Online:

    The Wellcome Trust: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/

    Raphael G. Satter can be reached at: http://twitter.com/razhael

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    8 comments

    • Lunar-Len
      Lunar-Len  •  6 mths ago
      Sounds like a very interesting book. I have a relative who suffers from the disease. "Brutal" is an excellent word to describe the toll it takes on one's faculties. I'm going to check this book out, as well as some of the other novels mentioned.
    • A Yahoo! User  •  6 mths ago
      The French writer Marguerite Yourcenar wrote "Les memoires d'Hadrien" and was inducted into the Academie francaise for it (first woman to do so). It supposes that the roman emperor Hadrian was senile while writing his memoirs. Read it in French if you can, it is a great book.
    • Margy
      Margy  •  6 mths ago
      I'm intrigued. Think I will check out the book!
    • MnM
      MnM  •  Doylestown, United States  •  6 mths ago
      "emphatically confirms the ability of literature to tell us more about the heart and soul of an illness than any textbook."
    • petal
      petal  •  6 mths ago
      This book was incredible, and richly deserves any award it garners. The writing is fantastic.
    • MadMac
      MadMac  •  Austin, United States  •  6 mths ago
      Seems like I read this book before but it was called, "The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey" and it was written by Walter Mosley in 2010.
    • Me
      Me  •  6 mths ago
      Alzheimers murder mystery? Did they forget who they killed?
    • CoolWisdomPrevails
      CoolWisdomPrevails  •  6 mths ago
      Just put it on hold. I have Eisenhower's disease, but at least I can still read.
      Did you know it's a fatal disease? I didn't either till I read up on it. But it's
      like a slow bike race. Takes a while.
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